I am a Product Design student at Brunel University, I am looking into the problems with existing festival tents, in particular how people leave them behind after the festival. I would love to hear from you, this is a quick survey about how people use existing tents, shouldn't take more than 2 minutes.

I did your survey, although there seemed to be a couple of options missing. There was a question like 'how many other people share your tent' and it went straight from 'just me' to '2', whereas for me the answer is that one other person shares my tent; guessing that's just an issue with the way the q was phrased. More fundamental seemed to be that 'size / space' was missing from the "what's most important to you when buying a tent". Both times I've upgraded my tent it's because I wanted more room - I imagine it's a major consideration for a lot of other people, too.

I have also filled in your survey, however i did not answer the "how much do you pay for your tent" question as I have never purchased a single festival tent. I either use a 30 year old mountain tent i inherited from scouting. Or we repair and use tents which we have obtained after they are left by other festival goers.

I imagine quite a few others have never paid for a tent so might be worth an option.

General tents bugs:Carbon Poles are generally gooseberry, flexlite aluminium is a much better option and less likely to break. Also if it does break then its usually easier to repair with duct tape on site.Inner Pitch First and fixed inners are horrendous (all in one pitching with removable inners only please).Aluminium pegs are never up to the task, the tri-star guy pegs which vango have used since 2010ish are pretty sturdy due to the shape of them, the standard pegs however are just to weak like all aluminium pegs. Unless weight is a key issue then I swap all my pegs for 8" steel rockpegs as they do not bend, and you can smash them in with anything to hand.

Rick wrote:Or we repair and use tents which we have obtained after they are left by other festival goers.

This is a really good system, although I find that you have to get in quite early or the best tents end up being nabbed by someone else. The first year I did it, I left it right till midday, and the only tents that hadn't been bagged by people doing the same thing were crappy popups filled with empty beer cans and used barbeques. This year I went round a day earlier and it made all the difference in the world - people had abandoned some really excellent, expensive tents, and instead of being filled with rubbish, they'd been abandoned with like, airbeds, fresh food, and sometimes sleeping wives and girlfriends.

Rick wrote:Or we repair and use tents which we have obtained after they are left by other festival goers.

This is a really good system, although I find that you have to get in quite early or the best tents end up being nabbed by someone else. The first year I did it, I left it right till midday, and the only tents that hadn't been bagged by people doing the same thing were crappy popups filled with empty beer cans and used barbeques. This year I went round a day earlier and it made all the difference in the world - people had abandoned some really excellent, expensive tents, and instead of being filled with rubbish, they'd been abandoned with like, airbeds, fresh food, and sometimes sleeping wives and girlfriends.

Some great feedback (and disturbing deer pictures) Sorry about the questions that were not clear enough or didn't take into account more options. Do you scavenge tents after you have been to the festival and leave your own? Or do you take both?